It seems that it’s not hot just in Milano but also in Portland. At least the debate between Eben Moglen and Tim O’Reilly at the OSCon seems to have heated up. While giving a speech there, Moglen invited O’Reilly to join the conversation about freedom that he has been avoiding. From what I read, Eben used his direct (warning: euphemism) style and Tim interpreted it as an attack. But, all things considered, Eben is right: it’s time to grow up and face the real issues.

Moglen took O’Reilly to task over supporting "open source" rather than
free software. "If we’d been worrying about principle instead of open
source … You guys were wasting time talking about open source…. We
still have serious problems to correct in public policies made by
people propping up business models that were dying and wasting time
promoting commercial products."

Up and until mid-may the members of the relevant Uninfo committee (JTC1) were five: IBM, Microsoft, CEDEO (Leonardo Chiariglione), the PLIO organization (Openoffice.org in Italy) and HP. Then new members started flocking. At the last count, voters were 83

In other words: The only way to not be locked into MS-OOXML is to stay away from it. Because no matter what Microsoft and its business partners claim, the converters promote lock-in, they don’t avoid it.

It’s recent news that the Italian Camera dei Deputati (the lower
chamber of the Parliament) has started a project to offer support for
GNU/Linux on desktops for those that ask it. I hope to see Pietro Folena‘s
laptop equipped with Free Sw next time I meet him 🙂 From what I
understood also the backend infrastructure of the chamber will also
migrate to GNU/Linux.

The big news, IMHO, is that the
technical helpdesk has been prepared to support GNU/Linux, which is an important achievement. I’m one of those that believe that Free/Libre Software
shouldn’t need laws that mandate it. What is most needed IMHO, is that
CIO of public administrations are trained and prepared to deal with
Free Software acquisition. Tenders to “buy” software often contain
provisions that cut out Free Software based solutions (as it was the case
fought and won by Assoli).

Boy, FakeSteveJobs is so funny, even when he calls us ‘freetards‘. This post is not about rms not getting an iphone, but it’s aimed directly at Gates and about Vista. It’s an interesting read because it could be a post that one of us could have written (and probably did). I love the advice to get rid of Ballmer: I think that most of the bad in Microsoft comes from him, too 🙂

Because you know what you’ve become? You’ve become the Grinch.
You’ve become a tax collector. You’re the guy people hide from when you
ride into town. It’s not good. You need to do something about that.

Microsoft has decided that the Novell support certificates that we distribute to customers will not entitle the recipient to receive from Novell, or any other party, any subscription for support and updates relating to any code licensed under GPLv3